I waited through each tantalizing day, hoping that the clear skies I beheld early in the morning would stay until nightfall: and they never did. Finally, after consulting the west coast GOES satellite page (here, although a picture is not always available on the NOAA server) I decided that the Fates were against me. A huge never- diminishing curving swath of rainclouds had gathered over the Pacific, covering the area from the Monterey Bay all the way to the Oregon border, and above. But south of Monterey it was tending to be clear: so on Saturday 28 December I made the long trek to Lake San Antonio in southern Monterey County: a park near the coast that is favored during warm seasons by boaters.
Though the sky IS darker -- generally -- than my site in the Santa Cruz mountains south of San Jose (at least when there is high pressure and no ground fog below my mountain peak), Lake San Antonio is not much more than 1/3rd of the altitude at my regular site, which is only a 42 minute drive from home. And the proximity to the nearby lake probably causes the high moisture that spoils cold weather observing. However, even the summer and early fall are often a trial to the visitor. In August or September, the "CalStar" party is held there, and as you can see from this Gallery of John Pierce's photos, LOTS of amateur astronomers go to observe, image, and kibbitz: and I tend to get nervous and distracted by so many other hobbyists near me, and have an urge to look through -- and AT -- their scopes, rather than staying with mine. So I've never gone to that star party, though I started observing at Lake San Antonio around 1985, never with more than one or two friends, or with my wife; sometimes even alone.
Having 'enjoyed' (allegedly) the 105-degree F summer days at Lake San Antonio, while waiting for dark, I well remember the incessant scream of countless flying insects in the trees: which finally drove my poor wife Regina -- back in the year 2000 -- to put her foot down. We had to abort an observing session and drive home, in fear of the wasps. Dan Wright has published a (sort of) amusing article about the last CalStar (amusing if you HAVEN'T had these experiences!); and I quote --
- I listed wasps on the menu because I predicted we'd have a few, but I didn't realize how bad it would "bee". Almost nobody could eat at the table because gangs of wasps would bedevil anyone sitting with food. I advised people to grab a breakfast plate then walk away in order to eat. I remember friends carrying plates marching in wide circles around my camp, staying in constant motion to escape wasps.
Half our daytime at Calstar was spent talking about the wasps and planning their demise. Carl "meat bees" Larson taught me not to be afraid. I watched him wade unconcerned into buzzing swarms of them in order to cook or serve food, or to wash dishes, or re-position wasp traps. Rob Hawley and Shane Raney drove into Paso Robles to purchase traps, and by the end of Calstar we had trapped perhaps 400 wasps without noticeably denting their population. Jamie Dillon and Mike Delaney set examples of patience and courage around them. I became fearless myself -- I would stride up to a wastebasket with perhaps 50 wasps foraging frantically inside, then without flinching I'd smash down and compact the garbage, ignoring the sudden angry booming of their wings, and cinch up the sack and carry it off to the dumpster with the little beasts following and darting at my ears.
We identified them as Vespula vulgaris, the Common Wasp, a.k.a. yellow jackets. Their sting is less serious than that of a honeybee. The stinger isn't barbed and doesn't detach from the bee and work its way into the wound (but on the other hand, wasps can stab multiple times like a sewing machine). Honeybee stings evolved to deter mammals from raiding honey, whereas wasp stings are mostly for fighting other insects. Honeybee venom is a complex mix of toxins, whereas wasp venom is comparatively simple (by what I've read).
The picture above is linked from Dan Gordon's 2008 CalStar FotoTime gallery, which has many other shots of the intrepid northern California astronomy enthusiasts who are willing to bear this onslaught of unleashed nature. (I am not really very squeamish, but have to explain that as a child I was stung by a nest of wasps; had an anaphalactic reaction; and had to be rushed to the hospital: NEVER AGAIN! By exercising care -- and being lucky -- I haven't had a subsequent wasp sting in 50 years!)
As far as I'm concerned, though Lake San Antonio can award the observer with incredible summer Milky Way sights, I'll stick with late fall or very early spring for any occasional trips I'll plan; and of course fall offers the best seeing. Furthermore, any weekend that is near a holiday involves boaters, who are incompatible with amateur astronomers! Sorry, folks: but it's true. This has also diminished my own enthusiasm for the local south bay area observing site Coyote Lake.
Prior to the 'wasp overload' in 2000, Regina and I often travelled to LSA, and enjoyed rich-field viewing with large binoculars, my old "Astroscan", and on a few late fall trips around 2005 and 2006, Regina's newer "StarBlast" telescope. Such instruments don't perform satisfactorily at low power in skies that have light pollution; but in a truly dark sky (such as the 7.5+ naked eye magnitude at LSA) they're a joy to use. I have logged many allegedly difficult objects at LSA using 80-mm binoculars or a 4-inch scope, such as the Cocoon Nebula; Barnard's Loop; the "Horsehead" (naturally; it's my specialty!); and faint local-group dwarf galaxies.
So, I reasoned that I would certainly be able to confirm WHATEVER I had suspected on 12-19-08, my presumed sighting of McNeil's nebula. Furthermore, I'd take another telescope, offering an entirely different image orientation, slightly higher resolution and light-gathering, and much longer focal length for easier high power: my C-11. The only problem: wet and frigid winter at LSA is not a good time to use that instrument! I would have to take special care to avoid fogging the exposed outer corrector plate, and to protect my laptop computer. During many earlier trips there, my companions and I always found that our expensive star atlases would be in danger of turning into papier-mâché, even on warm summer nights with high pressure. And in winter 2005, I drove all the way to the lake (nearly a three-hour trip) and found that after 20 minutes of observing I could not use any of my oculars, my finderscope, nor even my eyeglasses! I'd have to take precautions...
So, I brought along BOTH of my giant 92-AH marine batteries: one for the telescope/laptop, and one for the Orion dew-heating element that is wrapped around the outside of the C-11 corrector plate: it's a very power-hungry heater, and after about seven hours of use had nearly half-depleted my enormous battery! In addition, I also used a long dewshield on the front of the scope (shown below in this earlier picture I took a few months ago.)
Furthermore, I brought a bunch of Grabber MINI Hand Warmers, which cost about $1.25 a pair, and last for several hours: longer than a typical winter observing session. The chemical compound takes quite a while to heat up, but eventually they will achieve a higher temperature than the human body, and ward off moisture from cold, dew-attracting glass and metal surfaces. I filled all the pockets of my observing vest -- where I keep a half-dozen of my eyepieces during observing -- with hand warmers, and made sure to keep the covers on the oculars during every instant that my eye wasn't staring into them!
The laptop computer generates quite a bit of heat, so all I had to do was cover it up with a couple of large bath towels. But, sadly, the power inverter that I use to produce the 110vac to power my C-11 scope's transformer did NOT generate enough heat on its own, and actually froze, cutting off all voltage and causing my scope's electronics to stop working before 2 am. I had a spare with me, but after hooking it up to isolate the cause of the problem, I just did not have the energy or motivation to begin star-aligning the GOTO scope all over again in the 28 degree F temperature. So that cut short my observing session. Every single surface of EVERYTHING all around me was covered with ice (similar to this picture snapped by Mark Wagner at a recent observing session at Willow Springs on the last day of 2008.) I decided that it was wise to protect the expensive electronic equipment from any further mishap (such as, gasp, a regulator failure slamming higher than normal voltage into my laptop or scope!) and chose discretion rather than valor. I did manage to get in over six hours of observing.
There was another mishap. I arrived early; set up in the "overflow" parking lot, away from the lights, and prepared before dusk to get 'centered' and completely calm and relaxed for my observing session. But as soon as I turned on my laptop and started "TheSky", I was appalled: for I had not noticed a problem when using that program at home the day before. I had added the coordinates and label for "McNeil's nebula" to the user-defined object database, and everything seemed fine; I saved the settings and shut down the laptop. However, now that I was 150 miles from home, in the frigid remote site, things were quite amiss: on my display was a spurious icon figure (three little paintbrushes in a cup, over a piece of paper with a curled edge: the icon for a Paintbrush bitmap image.) I could move this aside and still see the center of the star chart; but the ENTIRE right-click menu was now gone. That meant I could not center objects; click on them and get data; or slew my scope to them. A catastrophe!
It took me an hour of fiddling, trying not to get panicky and to remain absolutely calm and steady, before I fixed the missing menu problem. The temperature dropped as the Sun went down below the horizon, and by the time my PC was working reasonably well (if not perfectly as I was used to) it was near freezing. Some start to the night's session! The next afternoon I tried to diagnose the problem and repair it properly; it took me a couple of days altogether to straighten it out (and I've written a Jottings essay with the details, and suggestions for users of that program in case they'd like to save their settings and avoid such a snafu. Click for Reliability Suggestion for users of "TheSky"™.)
Sad to say, all this time had used up my planned opportunity to put final touches on my observing program for the night, which I had intended to flesh out at LSA as darkness was gathering. As Emily Latella would have said, "There's always something" and you never know exactly what will go wrong: SOMETHING is bound to do so. While I would have enjoyed following a prepared list of objects, I had to concentrate mostly on trying to confirm McNeil's nebula; I'd get a few other nearby objects and see how long I could hold out...
To calibrate my conditions I commenced with some very familiar objects.
IC-405: emission nebula, in Auriga
Deep-Sky Browser page for IC-405.
The "Flaming Star Nebula" has an evocative nickname, but in an amateur telescope it offers an eye-view that is anything but flaming! The rich red color of hydrogen- alpha shows up only on color photos or digital imagery. I have always found this a disappointing object (unless you are an astrophotographer); but at least it's a good test of conditions.
- 7:35 pm. Laptop working again. I405 Barely vis even with 42 mm 2" [66x, 4.2 mm exit pupil, ~61' FOV] and UB or H-beta filt. Pretty dark; not wide enough field to appreciate it.
That's a pretty short and cryptic log entry, but I had better fish to fry, as it were.
IC-410: emission nebula, in Auriga
Deep-Sky Browser page for IC-410.
For more information about this object, see my own specific Faint Fuzzies article. I last looked at this object on 20 Nov 08, using my 4.7 inch refractor (when it was more satisfying to the eye than IC-405, as usual.) I was only looking for 'revelations' that I had never experienced before, and not obtaining any, was very brief:
- 7:45 pm. I405 Barely vis in 32 mm 2" [87x, 3.2 mm exit pupil, ~49' FOV], no filt. UB better; OIII much better, but dims *s greatly.
K 2-1 or PK 173-05.1: planetary nebula (?), in Auriga
Deep-Sky Browser page for PK 173-05.1.
As Greg Crinklaw explains in his "Skyhound" article about this object:
This object is both a challenge and an enigma. A 12.6 magnitude irregular galaxy (PGC 16765 = UCGA 100) is listed at this same position, and it appears to have been included as a galaxy in research papers as recently as 1997. It has also been variously classified as a planetary nebula, HII region, and reflection nebula. That just about covers it! Even today the SIMBAD database lists it as a reflection nebula, while the NED database lists it as a planetary.
The color image, above, is linked from Greg's article, and is a composite he prepared using a special process to combine the monochrome red and blue Palomar Survey images. Yet, if you click on the Deep-Sky Browser page link given above, you will see NOTHING whatsoever in the default blue-plate image that shows up.
And that's what I saw. at 8:20 pm: NOTHING. Nada. Nihil. Zip.
But with my 2-inch eyepiece collection my scope couldn't go lower 66.5x. Greg was able to see it with low power using his 16" Dobsonian scope where he lives in New Mexico (at about 7,000 feet altitude.) Generally I too would be able to get at least a trace of such an object with an 11" aperture instrument here in California, but not this night. I was beginning to be a bit worried about the sky conditions (and this was borne out later by my view of the Horsehead.) Was my tiresome trip (not to mention my computer scare) for naught? Would I be able to see the suspected McNeil's Nebula? STAY TUNED FOR THE EXCITING CONCLUSION, as the radio announcer used to say...)
Palomar 2: globular cluster, in Auriga
Deep-Sky Browser page for Palomar 2.
I believe that the last time I viewed Palomar 2, the faint globular cluster in Auriga, was on 30 September 2008, as discussed in this earlier blog entry. As of this writing, I only have one Pal globular -- no. 14 -- to go before I have seen the entire list with either my 10 or 11 inch telescope. I assumed that in the much darker sky of Lake San Antonio I might see a little bit more of this faint fuzzy -- but as it turns out, my earlier views were almost as good -- though perhaps 'good' is not the ideal word! Strike it, and replace with "faint, indistinct, but just discernible."
- 8:37 pm. Pal 2. Vis with only slightly averted vis in 21 mm Stratus [158x, 1.8 mm exit pupil, ~25' FOV]; also in 9 mm Expanse [311x, 0.9 mm exit pupil, ~12' FOV]: f but quite identifiable. No detail, just puff of glow. E f *s within radius of ~10'.
As I have carefully sketched this before on more than one occasion, I did not bother on this date to scratch a drawing. There was simply no doubt: my earlier observations had NOT been illusions.
Over the weekend I emailed Sue French and mentioned Pal 2, explaining to her that early last fall I'd mentioned seeing Pal 2 -- and all the rest except no. 14 -- at my mountain observing site, when I'd encountered some amateur observers at Coyote Lake. I seemed to sense some not very suppressed skepticism. Sue replied,
- People doubted Palomar 2 with a 10-inch? It's mag 13.0. I looked at it a couple times recently from my back deck with the Traveler. I'm thinking of including it in an article. Clear skies, Sue.
OK, scoffers. Her "Traveler" is a 4.1 inch aperture scope made by Astro-Physics. Here's a picture of one (on the left, next to a Takahashi FS102) from Ed Ting's website...
Here is the well-known picture of Sue, with her Traveler scope, that is shown in a small thumbnail image at the top of her monthly Sky & Telescope "Deep Sky Wonders" column. The scope may have a smallish aperture, but it's a wonderful precision instrument. If ANY telescope of this size can show Pal 2, it would be an Astro-Physics model.
Thanks, Sue, for the corroboration; and now I have a new goal: to see Pal 2 in my own 4.7 inch refractor!
NGC-1514: planetary nebula, in Taurus
Deep-Sky Browser page for NGC-1514.
This marvelous planetary nebula has been nicknamed "The Crystal Ball" by Greg Crinklaw; his interesting "Skyhound" article provides more information, a finder chart, and viewing suggestions. I too have written about this object: see my Faint Fuzzies article, describing an observation I made in 2006. I opined that it was not a 'challenge' object (even in the slight amount of light pollution at my mountaintop site south of San Jose), but in the glorious dark sky of LSA it was stupendous.
- 8:53 pm. N1514. Spectacular!! Fully seen with only slightly averted vis, 21 mm Stratus [158x, 1.8 mm exit pupil, ~25' FOV], no filter amazing with 11 mm [254x, 1.1 mm exit pupil, ~18' FOV] and OIII. Br'er lobe, about E/W, plus at least 3 *s in addition to br ctr: 'sparkly' with darker veins.
IC-428 Quandary Interrupts the Fun
Another object that was 'not seen' during this session at Lake San Antonio was IC-428, which I tried to get at 9:20 pm, finding that it was "probably not" perceived (though I have observed nearby IC-423 and IC-426, as noted in this earlier blog report.) IC-428 was a photographic discovery of Mrs. Williamina Fleming of Harvard College Observatory, first discerned on HCO photographic plates taken earlier, in 1888. Little studied by amateurs today, 'her' IC nebulae in this region are obscurities that are not plotted on all atlases or star chart programs. TheSky VI gave a 'center' for the object but without a picture in hand, I had no idea what I was looking for -- and saw little to convince me I was picking up a faint nebula. This bears further study.
While writing up this blog entry I looked up IC-428 and found that while both GUIDE 7 and TheSky VI recognize the object, they use different coordinates. On the NGC/IC Project website the (incomplete) page for it gives these coordinates:
Right Ascension (2000): 05h 36m 36.0s
Declination (2000): -6º 31' 00"
...and there, webmaster Bob Erdmann says "Object Type: Unknown / Unverified" and provides no other object classification or identification number. I checked the pertinent page of the original Index catalogue, published in 1895: and Dreyer reports for BOTH IC-427 and 428:
"L, probably connected with Great Neb",
presumably what HCO director E. C. Pickering had sent him, quoting Mrs. Fleming's report.
GUIDE 7 centers almost exactly on the coordinates given above but, oddly, does NOT plot it at all! TheSky VI plots it -- merely as a tiny icon symbol -- at RA 05h 36m 24s, Dec: -06°27'06" J2000: quite a bit off (it also gives the very misleading, unattributed, and badly-written -- partially meaningless -- description, alleging erroneously that Dreyer gave it as:
"Large, probably connected with Great nucleus extremely brighter." [sic].
This is NOT what was given by Dreyer in the first IC! Furthermore, TheSky VI placed IC-428 about 1'41" almost due west from the very bright 8th-mag star SAO 132357; but GUIDE 7 has chosen to center the object (though not to plot it) some four minutes south of it, and slightly to the east!
Wolfgang Steinicke's Revised Index Catalogue stipulates IC-428 at:
J2000: RA 05h 36m 24.2s;
Declination -06d 27m 06s
and says that it is an "EN+RN" (emission and reflection nebula). This set of coordinates is the same as given by TheSky VI, and differs with the yet-to-be-completed page on the NGC/IC Project. I do hope that Bob Erdmann, Steve Gottlieb, and Dr. Harold G. Corwin get around to IC-428 soon (while I'm 'still standing'.) I'd like to track this one down for certain! Before it's out of the sky, I intend to look it up via Aladin, plot it, and try again. Don't bother with the Deep-Sky Browser; it conflates IC-428 with NGC-1999, a very different object, and a much brighter one. I rather suspect that when the text description given by TheSky VI said, ungrammatically, "connected with Great nucleus extremely brighter" they had REALLY intended to write "Great nebula" followed by "nucleus extremely brighter" -- and meant in fact NGC-1999, which has a very bright nuclear region, 'punctuated' by a star.
I looked up IC-428 by means of the SkyView virtual observatory website. The coordinates it returned, via SIMBAD, were these:
J2000.0: RA 05h 36m 19.59s;
Declination -06d 45m 55.5s
Now we're thoroughly confused! Sources tend to agree that the nebula is located at a right ascension of 5 hours and 36 minutes; but the declinations are wildly off! The difference between SIMBAD's number and Steinicke's value is 18 arcminutes!
Here is the picture centered on Skyview's coordinates, in a wide field using the blue POSS II plate and the Stern Special palette; the bright patch at the bottom is NGC-1999:
Just at the very center of this picture, above, you are SUPPOSED to see IC-428. But, it is not there.
Next, I fed Wolfgang Steinicke's coordinates for IC-428 into Skyview. Behold!
In the precise center -- just to the right of the bright star SAO 132357 -- is a very 'fuzzy star' involved in nebulosity. Obviously this is what the careful, thorough Mrs. Williamina Fleming saw on the HCO plate! THIS is indeed IC-428. I had pointed my scope very carefully, after calibration and synching, to TheSky's NEARLY correct position, but did not see the nebula (possibly due to the glare from the nearby 8th magnitude star.)
One of my ultimate observing references -- the Uranometria Atlas' "Deep Sky Field Guide" by Cragin and Bonanno -- cites neither IC-427 nor 428. The sky atlas and field guide were prepared by avid visual observers, and though occasionally I've found what I believe are small errors (see my comments on NGC-2149) in this instance my guess is that none of the contributors to these publications HAD seen IC-428; doubted it -- or at least did not confirm its existence FOR CERTAIN -- and thus did not include it. So, by definition, it's pretty likely that IC-428 is not included in Bonanno's computer star chart program MegaStar. If I had been using that, I'd never have even tried to point my scope at its elusive position!
You can be sure that I will follow this up at the very next appropriate observing session.
UPDATE! I'm getting forgetful in my old age. After re-reading the above commentary on IC-428, I had a vague feeling of deja vu. Going back over my emails to Jaakko Saloranta, I located a PRIOR observation of this nebula, with the same C-11 telescope, done in a long observing session on 10/28-29/08 at my regular site in the mountains north of Santa Cruz. Here's what I had copied from my log in my letter to Jake:5:03a, IC 428: plotted by TheSky, and when I positioned the scope on the coordinate, I saw a slightly fuzzy star that looked a bit odd, maybe involving bg nebulosity. When I blinked it with the OIII filter, the star was heavily dimmed; the UB filter dimmed it less (6mm eyepiece, 466x.) GUIDE 7 plots this as being V658 Ori, a variable (14th-17th mag) but frankly I am not exactly sure if I was looking at EXACTLY that same star, as it seemed much brighter. I may have had GSC 4778:1319, mag 11.2. This object is not well documented and I had not prepared for it.
In checking the plot made by means of Skyview, using Steinicke's position for IC-428, I do believe that I had probably INDEED viewed the nebula on 10/29/08, for it does appear in the photograph to be a "fuzzy star". In looking at the closeup plot of V658 Ori with GUIDE 7, I see that there is a star rated at 13th magnitude (GSC 4778 1115) a bit more than one minute of arc to the west of V658. I was probably centered on that brighter star very near V658; there seems to be nebulosity in the entire region, judging from the POSS image shown above. So, at least on this particular occasion, I did see the nebulosity identified by Fleming as Harvard no. 428, and later catalogued by Dreyer as IC-428. -- srw, 1/21/09
Resuming the objects in my session:
NGC-1999: nebula complex, in Orion
Deep-Sky Browser page for NGC-1999.
This is a truly stunning deep-sky object, though one of small diameter (2 by 2 arcminutes) and thus something that doesn't exactly leap out of the field of view in a small telescope. In the pristine-dark sky at LSA, I was amazed, for I hadn't looked at it in years (since the early 1990s, with my 8" Newtonian.)
The 'complex' of nebulosity involves emission and reflection components and radiates at various wavelengths that will show up in a color picture: in this vivid image by Robert Gendler, via the APOD website, a faint cloud of hydrogen-alpha in long red wavelengths permeates the field, with the bright reflection cloud in shorter bluish wavelengths centered (at left) on -- according to Steve Gottlieb -- "mag 10.5 V380 Orionis (emission-line star)." Please note that Gendler's picture is rotated clockwise by what I estimate to be nearly 45 degrees (the correct orientation is shown on this NOAA webpage's picture.) Red and relatively minuscule Herbig-Haro objects are seen to the W and S of V380, and a large cloud of pale-blue glow seems 'behind' the h-alpha cloud, near the yellowish 10.6 magnitude star GSC 4778:1138 (approximately in the center-left.) Another Herbig-Haro complex -- the red curve and 'squiggles' -- is about 20 arcminutes to the NW. Almost none of these nebulosities can be seen by eye, save the very bright packet of blue-white glow around V380: the item originally discovered by William Herschel in 1785, and catalogued by Dr. Dreyer in 1888 as NGC-1999.
According to Steve Gottlieb's report on the NGC/IC Project webpage for the object (not direcly linkable here due to the scripting properties of their database) the nebula appears quite a bit different in large and small scopes, though there are commonalities:
- 17.5" (2/22/03): remarkable, bright 2' reflection nebula... At 220x, a prominent, curving dark patch or globule wraps around the star along the west side. Two of the brightest Herbig-Haro objects are close south, with HH2 4.3' due south and fainter HH1 2.5' SSW.
17.5" (2/8/90): bright, high surface brightness emission nebula surrounding a mag 10 star, round, about 2' diameter. There is a prominent curved irregular dark patch or globule along the west side of the central star ... The nebulosity is weakest on the SE side of star.
13": a curving dark lane is visible west of the central star with faint nebulosity west of the gap.
8": small circular nebulosity surrounds a mag 10 star.
On the occasion of my LSA trip, in the C-11 the bright reflection nebulosity was simply breathtaking, especially after my struggles, in vain, to see K2-1 and IC-428. I had not yet read Gottlieb's descriptions and on this occasion preferred not to write out my perceptions in words, but rather to make a sketch.
- 10pm. N1999. !! Large 2' neb around a 10th mag star. V-shaped region generally to the W seen with AV in 9 mm Expanse [311x, 0.9 mm exit pupil, ~12' FOV] or 15 mm Expanse [186x, exit pupil 1.5 mm, ~21' FOV]. Also det in 7.5 Lanthanum [372x, 0.8 mm exit pupil, ~6' FOV]. Poor with UB; also dimmed by SG filt; best with NO filt. in 9, 7.5, and 13 mm Stratus [215x, 1.3 mm exit pupil, ~19' FOV]. Excellent object!
My drawing was done with some attempt at realism in the top view, and at larger scale and with more of a schematic and simplified style below, in order to depict the 'wedge' that I saw, which seemed to have radial darker lanes leading from the center to the outer periphery at two points, at an angle of about 60 degrees. These details are NOT, incidentally, verifiable from the heavily overexposed Palomar Survey picture. However, this "closeup" view, via the Hubble Space Telescope, shows the keyhole- shaped wedge with amazing clarity. I perceived only some of the very dark "cavern" to the west of center; there seemed to be a distinct glow all around the star (except for the 'wedge' toward the WSW, where the nebula had a varied illumination.) A small dark patch just barely shows up in the negative Palomar survey picture, at the top of this section, as a little round 'white speck' (in negative mode) to the west of the central star, 'taking a bite' out of the nearly-round bright glow, but the much denser dark region that is so vivid in the Hubble picture shows up as a much smaller triangular shaped spot in the midst of the bright glow of the heavily exposed Palomar photograph.
I was rather surprised that the SkyGlow filter, which I often use on reflection nebulae, dimmed it so much that I preferred not to use it at all. But, the largest exit pupil I used was only 1.5 mm; if you use much lower power -- and have residual light pollution in the field -- an LPR type filter may help.
Furthermore, I had to be absolutely certain -- considering the moisture -- that the glow I was seeing was NOT caused by eyepiece-dewing. I kept the capped oculars in my pocket (with chemical warming pads) and put them in the scope, uncovering the glass only when looking at an object. Then, every few minutes I covered up my 'good' right observing eye, and shone the full illumination of my pocket red LED light onto the eye lens to make sure it was clear (and I also checked the scope's front corrector plate.) The eyepiece lenses were found to remain clear as long as I followed these precautions, up to a little past 1:30 am.
McNeil's Nebula
In short: I saw it and confirmed it. I have posted the complete description, and drawings, in my long Faint Fuzzies article about this object: look for the section "ADDENDUM: VISUAL CONFIRMATION" down about 4/5ths of the way through the article, which begins here.
I sent the drawings made by me on 12/19/08 and 12/29/08 to my friend and correspondent Sue French, who had looked at McNeil's nebula back in 2004 at its previous outburst. She replied that, based on my evidence, she felt that I had seen the nebula. I feel confident of that, too.
Further Tests, and "Breakdown"
I completed my second confirmation drawing of McNeil's nebula at around 12:50 am, and then continued despite the frigid 28d F temperature. I checked the Horsehead nebula between 1:15 am and 1:22, and found it to be distinctly disappointing: "B33 not good, barely vis in 21mm + UB (158x) , only slightly better w/H-beta filt and 25 mm (at 112x): not nearly as good as last time in Santa Cruz mtns!" That observation was made on 12/19/08, when I had looked at McNeil's nebula with my 'lowly' Orion 10 inch aperture Dobsonian. It's a chastening thought that the Horsehead LOOKED BETTER no more than 12 miles (straight-shot) from my light-polluted San Jose house, compared to the view in the C-11 some 150 miles further south, in a much darker sky at an isolated rural site. No doubt there were two major factors involved: the higher altitude at my site near San Jose, and the moist conditions at Lake San Antonio. I am beginning to believe that it is crucial to go ABOVE the local inversion layer in order to get the clearest views! This, if true, would suggest that most sites favored by amateur astronomers in the SF peninsula and bay area, are simply too low.
Some time after 1:30 am, my C-11 scope stopped tracking or responding to commands. Alarmed, I checked the hand-controller: the light was out. Working back to the main battery, I found that the power inverter running the scope was now totally dead, with NO output (though the battery had plenty of juice at normal voltage.) The separate inverter running my laptop was ok; so I got out one of my two spare inverters and substituted it; the scope came to life again. But -- at 28d F, with ice on everything; the towels covering the charts, logbook and laptop soaking wet; and my eyeglasses fogged over -- I was just about DONE. I had confirmed McNeil's nebula, but had found that the view of the Horsehead was sub-par: I had no motivation to do another complete star alignment of my GOTO scope from scratch. So I packed it in: which took me more than 75 minutes, including the onerous task of stripping off frozen grass from all the cords that had touched the ground, and scraping off slushy mud from my stools, scope tripod, and boots. Ugh! This may likely be my last winter excursion to LSA! (though, don't hold me to it; I'm a bit weak-willed and may 'slip', losing my resolve.)
On the long 3-hour drive home, I enjoyed some old time radio mystery shows (Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, Pat Novak for Hire, and Suspense), reliving my childhood in front of the magic glowing dial (as I basked in remembrance of the delights of the glowing nebulae that had filled my eyepiece views.) Despite the problems, the night had been worthwhile. The only question that remains: how do I top this in 2009?
Srw
(Edited on 16 February 2009, and 9 July 2009, correcting links to images created from the DSS pictures by Bob Erdmann of the NGC/IC Project website; and on 5/30/09 restoring working link to NGC/IC Project scan of original Index Catalogue)
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